The Sea Poem by Barry Cornwall

The Sea

Rating: 2.7


THE SEA! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth’s wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.

I ’m on the sea! I ’m on the sea!
I am where I would ever be;
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe’er I go;
If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

I love, O, how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the sou’west blasts do blow.

I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I lov’d the great sea more and more,
And backwards flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother’s nest;
And a mother she was, and is, to me;
For I was born on the open sea!
The waves were white, and red the morn,

In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise roll’d,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcom’d to life the ocean-child!

I ’ve liv’d since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers, a sailor’s life,
With wealth to spend and a power to range,
But never have sought nor sighed for change;
And Death, whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea!

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
gwen nombro 06 January 2018

What animal does he refer to

13 18 Reply
Hellen Saphire 25 November 2018

You should know. Read it carefully

0 11
Rod Hallewell 13 October 2017

Love this, it shows a passion for sea that but a seafarer could only see and beleive

5 0 Reply
Alexandra 04 March 2019

How old where you when you write the story

3 1 Reply
this poem is ok 21 March 2022

bro he died in 1874

0 1
VCJ McGee 28 September 2022

My 6th grade teacher gave us an assignment to read and memorize a poem. I actually read several dozens of poems but this one 'spoke to me ' and more than half a century later I still remember it and love reciting it

2 0 Reply
Heelo 11 November 2021

How old is he it's for a question

3 2 Reply
Nived 18 August 2020

A luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory. The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife's death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child—a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her.

2 0 Reply
sedona 22 April 2019

what animal are you compared to? what age are you in the poem?

15 10 Reply
Prity 14 April 2019

It ws wowww

3 0 Reply
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